BOCA RATON, FL. Back in February 2026, a state inspector visited Lacima Coffee, a mobile coffee cart operating in Boca Raton, and found that the person in charge could not correctly answer questions about foodborne disease, could not describe conditions under which a sick employee should be excluded from work, and had no written procedures in place for handling a vomiting or diarrheal incident on site.
The inspection, conducted February 25, 2026, by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, resulted in five total violations. None were corrected on site.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector's notes on the person in charge are direct. The person running the cart "was unable to correctly respond to questions relating to food borne disease and symptoms that may cause food borne disease" and "was unable to relate to conditions of restriction and exclusion." In plain terms, the person responsible for food safety operations at the cart that day did not know the rules for when a sick employee should be kept away from food.
A separate but related violation documented that the person in charge "was unable to ensure that food employees were informed in a verifiable manner to report their illness and or symptoms relate to diseases that are transmissible through food." There was no evidence that staff had been told what illnesses to report or how.
The cart also had no written procedures for cleaning up accidental vomiting or diarrheal incidents.
One of the five violations was a repeat. Inspectors noted that no chemical sanitizer test kit was available on the mobile cart, the same problem documented in a prior inspection. A test kit is the tool used to confirm that sanitizing solution is mixed at the concentration required to actually kill pathogens on food-contact surfaces.
What These Violations Mean
The three violations tied to the person in charge are categorized as priority foundation violations, a classification that reflects their role in preventing larger food safety failures. A person in charge who cannot describe when a sick employee must be excluded from work is not equipped to prevent a sick worker from handling food and beverages served to customers. Norovirus and hepatitis A, both transmissible through contaminated food and drink, can spread precisely when this kind of oversight is absent.
The requirement for written cleanup procedures for vomiting and diarrheal incidents exists because those events can release concentrated amounts of pathogens into a food preparation environment. Without a documented protocol, workers improvise, and improvised cleanup of a norovirus incident can spread contamination rather than contain it. For a mobile cart with limited space and surfaces, that risk is amplified.
The repeat sanitizer test kit violation is a separate but compounding concern. Chemical sanitizers work within a specific concentration range. Too weak and they don't kill pathogens. Too strong and they become a hazard themselves. Without a test kit, there is no way to verify that the sanitizing solution being used on the cart's food-contact surfaces is effective. Inspectors found this problem before and found it again in February.
None of the five violations were corrected during the inspection.
The Longer Record
Lacima Coffee's inspection history at this location goes back to October 2025, when it passed a preoperational inspection with zero violations. Two more clean preoperational inspections followed in January 2026, and a focused inspection in early February 2026 also found nothing to cite.
The pattern shifted after the cart began operating. A February 2, 2026 inspection found two violations. The February 25 inspection found five, including the repeat sanitizer test kit citation and the three person-in-charge knowledge failures.
The record after February is more serious. A March 12, 2026 inspection found five violations. Then on March 25, 2026, inspectors returned and documented seven violations under an inspection type labeled "Operating Without a Valid Food Permit." A second inspection the same day found two more violations. That is a combined nine violations across two inspections on a single day, and one of those inspections was triggered by the cart operating without a valid permit.
The sanitizer test kit violation that appeared as a repeat in February had already been cited before that, which means inspectors flagged the same missing equipment across multiple visits without seeing it resolved. A mobile food vendor operating without a test kit, without staff illness reporting protocols, and without a person in charge who can answer basic food safety questions is not a facility where oversight is functioning as intended.
The February 25 inspection closed with all five violations unresolved.